Project L Will be Free-to-Play, Riot Games Announces

Project L, the upcoming fighting game to be released by Riot Games, has been officially announced as free-to-play in a video posted by Tom Cannon, Senior Director and Executive Producer of the project. While players speculated that Project L was likely to be free-to-play, it has now been officially confirmed.

The upcoming 2D tag-based fighter was initially announced at Evo 2019. After the initial announcement, the project essentially went dark for over a year before a big update video that was released in November 2021. Since then, announcements have still been sparse, but update videos and blog posts have slowly become more frequent.

In the newest update video released by Tom Cannon, he officially confirms that Project L will be free-to-play. He does mention monetization, though, and how he wants it to be “respectful of both your time and your wallet.” This monetization will likely come in the form of unlocking champions and buying champion skins, both of which are monetization models used by League of Legends.

Free-to-play fighting games have been gaining more attention recently with the open beta of MultiVersus, which saw over 100,000 concurrent players as a free-to-play game. MultiVersus allows players to spend real money on characters and skins, giving more credence to the idea that Project L will likely go down that route.